Following a Weberian notion of legitimate rule, the ability to govern effectively may not only be conceived in terms of coercion or incentives, but also the willingness of people to recognize actors as legitimate “authorities” in a number of ways. As many scholars have convincingly argued, non-governmental agencies and international bureaucracies play a decisive – and maybe increasing – role in international politics by being recognized as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. An oft-claimed trend towards a denationalized “multic-centric-world” (James Rosenau) may result, although empirical evidence is incomplete at best. Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Juergen Habermas, this paper argues that looking at the way actors refer to others as “authorities” during political debates enables us to answer the question to what extent a process of political denationalization is actually taking place. To illustrate the usefulness of such research on the “authority talk,” the paper draws on a text analysis of debates on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur taking place in six public fora: two parliamentary chambers (the US House of Representatives and the UK House of Commons), two “new” media outlets (CNN.com and BBC.uk), and two “classic” newspapers (The Guardian and The New York Times). the paper focuses on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur. Given unreliable information in terms of the scale of human suffering and its local context and causes, societies abroad are in desperate need for credible information and interpretations about what it “means to them,” in terms of their own capacities and duties. This is where international and non-state actors become integral parts of various political arenas, as epistemic authorities (“experts”) that compensate for the lack of sufficient factual knowledge held by journalists, politicians and audiences alike. Moreover, the reputation of humanitarian agencies as the moral conscience of the “world” gives their calls for action the impetus of an authoritative definition of responsibilities. By looking at the way actors refer to international and non-state institutions, it is argued, we can research their accumulation of “symbolic power.”